


I Don't Want To Fall

by SardonicusRust



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, Internalized Nonbinaryphobia, Nonbinary, Nonbinary Main Character, Other, They/Them, bisexual homoromantic, enbyphobia, identity struggle, liliana deserved more, romancephobia, romanticphobia, saira deserved more, self hatred, what it says on the tin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:54:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25794709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SardonicusRust/pseuds/SardonicusRust
Summary: Liliana doesn't want to fall in love.
Relationships: Saira al-Tahan/Liliana Beekos
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	I Don't Want To Fall

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure if nonbinaryphobia is the right term for it but... please mind the tags
> 
> written while drunk so be warned ye who read

The crush is like a punch to the gut and they hate it.

They _hate_ it.

So they do the rational thing and recklessly begin skipping through boyfriends. They’re fine. Safe. They can be attracted to a man, they like feeling wanted and having someone who’s always present and trusted to come when they call, but they know they can’t establish and maintain a true long-term romance with a man. It’s not hard to keep up the catch and release. They… she’s smart, and smart w- women, smart woman like her, it’s simple to be desirable in appearance, easy to smile and laugh, captivate, capture, and then skip along to the next when things get too serious.

Liliana knows Saira will be the end of them.

The clever al-Tahan heiress is at least as smart as they are, if not smarter. Definitely more powerful. They know the constant ebb and flow of their own sense of self isn’t stable enough to withstand being with her. They like beautiful things, but there is such thing as too beautiful, and the similitude of wanting to be with and wanting to be- it’s simply too much. So they don’t.

They find-  
 _no-_ _  
_ She finds another man to have on her arm, and curses the damn troublemakers. She does love a bad boy.

Watching Saira from a distance makes them question themself for the first time in… in a long time.

 _What is wrong with you_? th- she silently snarls at the mirror, though her reflection is impassive. Good. A face is an easy thing to wear, muscle and flesh. Shape it the way she wants, hold it just so. She doesn’t remember the last time she got caught in a lie.

Somehow they end up engaged. They don’t know how it happened. They don’t love him. He’s alright. He tends to them, he’s pretty but not moreso than them, smart but not moreso than them, and he knows this. They are above him, and that’s what’s important. Being engaged sucks. But to break it off will cause scandal and bad attention, so they let it all carry on. They dive into their work, deep, and refuse to surface.

They nearly go to jail, but a combination of money, reputation, bold-face lying, and the long years spent making themself invaluable- these work good as any key, and the manacles don’t stay long. They go free- under the condition that they’re supervised.

Fine. Fine. They have nothing to hide.

Except their supervisor appears to be none other than that damn elegant halfling banker’s daughter, and Liliana wants to trace those lips with their thumb. Instead, they call her a bitch inside their head. Outside, they simply shake her hand, keeping it formal, cold, professional. Working under supervision is harder than they expect, harder still with it being someone they’re so goddamn hyperaware of. They want to seem smart. They want Saira to fall in love with them.

Love? When did they start using such frivolous lacey words like ‘love’?

They know they're going to fuck this up. It’s a goddamn disaster.

 _Focus, Yana,_ they scream inside their mind. The maths for the circuitry they’re building is wrong. Has their brain fallen out their ears along with logic and common sense? _Nothing good will come of this. Put it away. Put it all away._

 _Why can’t I put it away_?

They don’t want to fall in love. They-

She doesn’t want to fall in love.

Th-

She refuses to fall in love.

She scrubs out the maths and tries again. The resistors are parallel, not sequential. Stupid mistake. Saira saw. Saira now thinks she’s stupid.

“Sorry to have to do this. I know neither of us really want this,” the halfling says. This is at once true and not true, another infuriating illogical bullshit thing spinning round Liliana’s head. Liliana wants Saira to be so close that they can’t tell where they end and Saira begins. They want Saira to walk away and never come back. They want to go back to being perfect. They want some fucking logic.

They don’t want to fall in love.

They’re too busy flying.

Falling?

“I’m just going to set up shop here? Is this desk okay? I’ve got work to do myself, and I’m not going to hover or anything.”

Liliana seethes as they realize how little they actually know of Saira. They don’t know what exactly she does for the meritocracy, don't know what she went to university for that got her here, don't know if she prefers red or white wine, or beer, or what her favorite color is or her dreams, don't even know her middle name-

How can they be in love with someone they barely know? Love is the most incredible fallacy of logic and existence. They could be redesigning power itself. They could be remaking the world. Could be shoving the bounds of technology out of the way and stepping into enlightenment. And instead, they’re admiring the way Saira laughs when they tell her that she’d better not start hovering, lest they want to use her flying ability to use the top unused portion of their blackboards.

_Why am I flirting with her? I have to stop._

_I can’t do this_.

They will do this. They look at the empty place on their hand where the ring had been for that short uncomfortable period, the space between those fingers unhappily occupied, making them rub their fingers together against the foreign intrusion.

Saira observes that Liliana is left handed, and says something about the rarity of females being left handed.

Liliana makes a half hearted sound, trying to be dismissive and cutting. It cuts them open as much as they wish it cuts Saira open.

“Or, uh- assigned female at birth, anyways. Do you- is she okay for you? I can use them.”

Liliana finishes the equation. Saira lets them.

They-

_Why does it matter? Leave it alone._

She holds the chalk and looks at the numbers, forcing th- herself to stay where she is. _Stay. Where. You. Are_.

Behind them is a person who cares and sees them.

Before them are numbers.

They do not turn.

“I don’t care.”

They can instantly hear their own falsehood in their words, and screams inside their head some more. What’s going on? They could’ve said the lie as smooth as anything, as easy as breath. It’s just words and voice. Control it. Get a fucking grip. They can lie.

So wh-

They’d let the lie slip on purpose.

They need to choose logic over love, and th- she was _choosing wrong_.

“I’ll use them, and if you’d rather me use she, let me know, okay?”

Liliana says nothing. They’re done talking for the day. They carry their math out to six decimal points in a form of self punishment.

They do their math. Work. Tries to dive again, tries to slip into the inky black of the unknown, where everything is cold and silk and fluid, each discovery leading to another, deeper, deeper.

Until the day Saira comes into the lab, as she does every day now, where she works now, where they share space now, their now, their reality, ‘their’- the two of them. Until the day Saira comes into the lab, drops her bag on the desk, and immediately buries her face in her hands and sobs.

Liliana freezes.

They could ignore her. And that would be the nail in the coffin, the satisfying last page of the book, the period at the end of the blasted fantasy that’s been trying to snare them for weeks. If they hear her openly sobbing and do nothing, it will establish their own perfect chill. They should work. They will work. They will ignore the crying and will finally properly choose the math over the mystery, they will crush the crush, freeing themself of the pain like an ingrown nail. It will hurt. But it will be over. This is the right choice. Power and logic.

They aren’t powerful.

They’re goddamn fucking stupid and useless and going over to Saira’s desk and wrapping arms around her shoulders. They’re rubbing idiotic helpless circles on their back as Saira sobs about the loss of her brother in some futile attempt to save her other brother, and even as Liliana silently despairs at the al-Tahan children’s lack of logic, they despair at their own, because sitting here crying and holding each other isn’t productive or helpful. Saira wants Hamid and Ishmael back. But instead of doing something useful, here they are. Being saps. Useless.

They hate themself a little more even as they love Saira a little more. They’re afraid.

They wants to fall in love, but-

it will be so far to fall

and they don’t know that they can survive such a fall.

They’re in love and they hate every moment of it.

Logic- hate and love cannot exist in the same point. Can they?

None of this is logical.


End file.
